Design & Analysis of Experiments
Aims
To teach students how to design and analyse experiments in plant community and population biology. To prepare students for future and ongoing thesis projects.
Content
A mixture of lectures and extensive assignments to be completed during laboratory hours or more as needed. The laboratoty periods will be used to learn the use of software and perform analyses. The course is divided in a 2 credit segment on experimental design and topics related mainly to the textbook (ANOVA, regression, correlation, loglinear analysis), and a 1 credit segment on, multivariate statistics, spatial analysis and Monte Carlo approaches. The focus will be on performing and evaluation analyses on datasets from ongoing wxperiments in plant community and population biology. Students are encouraged to bring data from their own thesis projects but other datasets will be provided for use in all assignments if needed. Though most examples will be drawn from botanical studies, students with other interests are invited to attend.
Teaching curriculum
4 Lectures (2x2) and 6 hours of laboratory exercises weekly for 12 weeks. The entire course including all written assignments will be in English.
Prerequisites
Basic knowledge of statistics is required. The course is aimed at Ph.D. students. In case of vacancy, graduate students are invited to participate only if they are currently working on thesis research projects.
Teacher
Pamela Hall, phall@bio.fsu.edu
Examination
No finas exam will be given but students must complete all assignments and a short group project.
Limit on number of attendees
12
Teaching material
Sokal, R.R. and Rohlf, F.J. 1995. Biometry (3rd edition) - W.H. Freeman and Company, New York, USA. Rohlf, F.J. and Sokal, R.R. 1995. Statistical Tables (3rd edition) - W.H. Freeman and Company, New York, USA. Original jounal articles. Software and hardware: Access to a computer with Excel version 4 or higher.
Additional remarks
This course is primarily organized for Ph.D. students and these will be given first priority in cases of limited capacity. Graduate and postgraduate students that wish to audit the lectures without receiving course credit are invited and encouraged to do so. Teaching is in English except in cases where the instructors and all participants are Danish speaking.